What if - Cap Hit

Yellowknife (CP) With Ottawa trading Andrej Meszaros to Tampa Bay today, I couldn’t help but notice two things; one he just became the 8th member of YDP that was also on TB’s NHL roster; Lukowich, Fedotenko, Afanasenkov, Cibak, Ouellet, Boyle, Carle & Meszaros. Second, the announcement of him signing a contract with an average salary of $4M per year got me thinking. What if RHL teams were responsible for their player’s NHL contracts? If this was the case YDP would have a cap hit in RHL20 (2008-09) of $80.896M (in a $56.7M cap world). Ignoring the misalignment of our current roster (2006-07 based) with the NHL cap, the thought of cutting $24M off my current roster would make even a numbers guy like me dizzy. After the very painful exercise I was still over by $1M. This included the releasing of Sakic, Getzlaf, Rolston, Tanguay, Bouwmeester and Boyle. After breaking out in a cold sweat I decided not to continue this project for other teams, but I suspect many teams would exceed the NHL hard cap and some teams would match and likely break YDP's $80M mark.

Ima Dumass (CP)

Transition

Yellowknife (CP) It’s been several months since YDP experienced another heart wrenching game 7 lost to the Rovers. Despite the disappointment RHL17 was viewed as a major success as YDP captured it’s 2nd consecutive division title, made it’s first final four appearance, and was co-winner of the Toe Blake award for coach of the year. Since then Penetrators brass has made many tweaks (http://rhloly.wordpress.com/2008/08/24/rhl18-preview-ydp/) in hopes of building on last seasons performance.

‘We were one game away from making the finals last year,’ said GM Wong, ‘so if we to mirror our success, we’ll need to do the little things right like win every corner battle, every shift and every period, before we can even think about winning games.’ The Calder division is by far the best division in hockey. With the exception of the expansion Grizzly Bears, every team can roll out 2 scoring lines plus 4 decent defensemen. The goaltending fraternity is also excellent in the Calder, which boasts names such as Lehtonen, Giguere, Khabibulin, Kolzig, Vokoun and Fleury. ‘Every divisional game will feel like the playoffs,’ said Wong, ‘we could see as many as five teams in our division making the playoffs this year.’

With training camp winding down, YDP’s coaching staff will have some tough decisions to make, who to play, who to keep in the press box and who to send down to Charlotte. ‘Depth is a nice problem to have,’ said Wong, ‘I’ll do my best to keep everyone happy with their icetime.’ Here’s a quick peak at YDP’s current roster:

Rolston – Sakic – Stempniak
Tanguay – Brind’Amour – Hemsky
Axelsson – Sykora – Boyes
Chimera – Getzlaf – Lupul
Kelly - Gaustad – Ouellet

Bouwmeester – Boyle
Zhitnik – Weber
Carle – Lukowich
C.White – Lydman
Meszaros – Jurcina

Fleury - Garon
Ima Dumass (CP)